Commercial Real Estate

Summers in Redding, about 225 miles north of San Francisco, are long, hot and dry. Developer Imperial Group and architect Nichols Melburg & Rossetto wanted to design the most comfortable and energy-efficient building possible when they built the single-story, 21,000 square-foot Craftsman-style Park Marina Building.

Trane and Lee Air Conditioners, Raleigh, North Carolina, teamed up to provide high quality HVAC systems and fast response when Duke Construction, a division of Duke Realty, built a three-building corporate office campus at Perimeter Park, Morrisville, North Carolina.

Faced with replacing an outdated chiller plant at the end of its life cycle, Credit Suisse explored the prospects of a high performance building that addressed the overall goals of energy savings, improved plant resiliency and environmental consciousness.

Columbia Square worked with Trane to install new water chillers that improved chiller plant efficiency by 40 percent and reduced energy use by 527,000 kWh. The chiller plant upgrades also resulted in annual operating cost savings of $35,600 due to decreased maintenance and service requirements of the new Trane chillers. In addition, Columbia Square has earned the Green Building Initiative’s highest rating of Four Green Globes, and achieved U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR™ certification.

TIAA-CREF has improved the comfort, reliability and efficiency of its headquarters building by replacing aging steam absorption chillers with Trane high efficiency chillers, upgrading its cooling towers, and installing an ice thermal storage system. The thermal storage system shifts energy use to off-peak hours, saving approximately $765,000 per year in operating costs, energy use and demand charges. TIAA-CREF is using Trane proprietary optimization control logic to maximize the chiller and cooling tower efficiency. The Trane New York-New Jersey Energy Services team completed this turnkey project for TIAA-CREF.

Merrick & Company is an employee-owned $111 million engineering, architecture, design-build, surveying, planning, and geospatial solutions firm, serving a variety of market sectors including energy, national security, nuclear, life sciences and sustainable infrastructure. The company has nearly 500 employees with locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.

Built in 1972, Municipal Square is a five-story, 100,000 square foot commercial office building located in West Orange, New Jersey. The building’s prime location, near transportation routes, Newark Liberty Airport and the courthouse, makes it a desirable location for approximately thirty-five tenants including law firms, architects, accountants, a bank and cafeteria. Municipal Square is managed by Municipal Square Associates, a real estate company principally owned by Drill Construction Company, which is also located in the building. A third-generation, family-operated firm, Drill Construction Company prides itself on making client and tenant satisfaction a top priority.

Building owner objectives were to increase efficiency and reduce costs, allow more flexibility to maximize tenant comfort, and upgrade to an automated system with computerized controls and tracking that could be run by anyone.

The Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation was established in 1922 to bring a voice to agricultural issues. The private, non-profit, non-governmental agency is the state’s largest general farm organization representing farmers, ranchers and rural residents. The federation is made up of volunteer leaders at the local, parish and statewide levels, with each parish having its own president and board members.

Northstar Center is a three-building complex consisting of two high-rise office buildings and the seventeen-story, twenty-four-hour Crown Plaza Hotel, built atop a six-floor parking garage. Building tenants are extremely diverse, consisting of lawyers, banks, shoe stores and a variety of other businesses.

The new Katy Medical Plaza sits on more than eight acres of land in a fast growing area just west of Houston. When finished, the three-building complex will provide 150,000 square feet of Class A medical office space for some of the area’s best-known and respected physicians. The first building, already completed, includes LEED features, such as a grass roof to help reduce heat load and cool the building inside; a cistern to collect rain water; a bicycle rack for tenant use; water retention capabilities for irrigation and building facilities; traction elevators to reduce electricity use; thick insulated walls for a tight building envelope; and high performance glass to regulate natural light.

Built in 1969, the seventeen-story rental property on Ocean Drive in Hollywood, Florida, was converted to
The Wave Condominium in 2004. The Wave, which includes 551 residential units and 23 retail and
professional spaces, is directly east of the Intracoastal Waterway. Residents and guests of the facility can spend their days enjoying Beverly Beach located in front of the property and amazing sunsets in the evenings.